| Board : | |
| Author : | |
| Subject : | |
| Date : | |
|
:: It's already well past sunset as you're passing by the :: :: Chronicles of the Winds. Usually you walk on past the :: :: board without a second thought, but this time something :: :: tells you to stop. Maybe you just need a little pleasant :: :: fiction before sleep. Regardless, you scan the various :: :: posts, until you see one that seems interesting... Bellrose Street was never a place that made it onto maps. Just a narrow bend of cobblestone between the city walls and the river, where the houses leaned into each other like old friends trading secrets. My sister Azraviah and I knew the sound each door made when it closed, the clatter of loose roof tiles in a storm, the way morning light caught on the laundry lines that zigzagged above the street like a web. It smelled of boiled starch from the laundries, of fried batter and river fish, of smoke curling from stoves too small for the number of mouths they fed. It wasn't beautiful, and it didn't smell pretty. But it was theirs. Until one morning, it was gone. They called it "relocation for city improvements." Said the families were moved to better homes, cleaner streets, safer surroundings. But the ones Azraviah managed to find afterward spoke in stilted words, eyes slipping away like they were afraid of being seen thinking. Some didn't remember the journey. More didn't remember the street at all. Most just never came back. I was living in Nagnang when it happened, but Azra was spared the sweep only by accident. At the time she was running errands for the Hall of Scholars - carrying messages, fetching supplies, sweeping floors, sleeping on folded blankets in storerooms when the day ran too long. Taking whatever work kept her hands busy and her mind occupied. It was late when she'd been asked to carry tea to a council chamber, a room where decisions were made in voices meant only for a privileged few. She wasn't supposed to hear them. But she did. They spoke of Bellrose Street like it wasn't somebody's home, but a problem. The words drifted toward her between the slow scrape of chairs and the soft chime of tea cups. "Better to cut it out before it spreads." "Just wipe it clean and start over." Then another, brisk and certain: "Scrub it from the ledger." And finally, a murmur so cold and emotionless she thought she'd imagined it: "No trace means less trouble." Each word landed like the twist of a blade, until it felt like her lungs had been bound in iron and she was breathing through a fist closed tight around her heart. There was no anger in their voices, just the neutral detachment of a task nearly done. Anger would've been better. Anger would've shown some understanding of the suffering they were going to cause. Azraviah stood frozen in the shadow of the doorway, breath locked in her chest, knowing that one wrong shift of weight would have her standing in plain view, her fate decided between a glance and an order. Only one councilor saw her. He didn't speak her name. Didn't look toward the others. His eyes found hers, steady, measuring. Then, with the smallest turn of his head, as if to no one, he mumbled: "Remember everything." And then he looked away. The conversation never faltered. She left as quietly as she'd come, but the sound of her pulse followed her all the way down the corridor, every sound in the halls pulling too close, every shadow seeming to follow as she walked the long way back to her borrowed sleeping space in the storeroom. That night she didn't sleep. She lay still on the folded blankets, staring at the beams overhead until dawn broke, hearing their voices again and again. Azraviah still didn't know why Bellrose was erased, or why she was spared. But the councilor had told her to remember, and she did. Every word. Every pause. Every name that was part of that decision. Including his. | |